ot fed. Like
your father of old, that Simon Magus, you have sought to buy the gift of
God with a price; like Judas Iscariot you have betrayed the Lord with a
kiss of brotherhood! Now might the Keeper of the Keys cry out to-day with
other meaning:

"How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such, as for their bellies' sake
Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths!"

XLVIII

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

Reading a foolish book on the Literature of Indiana (!) and find this
sentence on the first page: "It is not of so great importance that a few
individuals within a State shall, from time to time, show talent or
genius, as that the general level of cultivation in the community shall be
continually raised." Whereupon the author proceeds to glorify the "general
level" through a whole volume. Now the noteworthy thing about this
particular sentence is the fact that it was set down as a mere truism
needing no proof, and that it was no doubt so accepted by most readers of
the book. In reality the sentiment is so far from a truism that it would
have excited ridicule in any previous age; it might almost be said to
contain the fundamental error which is responsible for the low state of
culture in the country. Unfortunately the point cannot be profitably
argued out, for it resolves itself at last into a question of taste. There
are those who are chiefly interested in the life of the intellect and the
imagination. They measure the value of a civilisation by the kind of
imaginative and intellectual energy it displays, by its top growth in
other words. They crave to see life express itself thus, _sub specie
oeernitatis_, and apart from this conversion of human energy and emotion
into enduring forms they perceive in the weltering procession of transient
human lives no more significance or value than in the endless fluctuation
of the waves of the sea. For them, therefore, the creation of one
masterpiece of genius has more meaning than the physical or mental welfare
of a whole generation; they can, indeed, discern no genuine intellectual
welfare of a people except in so far as the people look up reverently to
the products of the higher imagination. There are others for whom this
life of the imagination has on